


First Frost

by Ophelia Coelridge (daemonluna)



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-03-10
Updated: 2000-03-10
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:25:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daemonluna/pseuds/Ophelia%20Coelridge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray is cold. Fraser is colder. It snows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Frost

Fraser had lit the candles that surrounded them solemnly, with the air of one performing a ritual. Ray, kneeling on the bare floor, had watched in bemusement but held his peace. For all he knew, it could very well be some sorta bizarre Inuit custom. And when Fraser had reached out slowly, and traced the stubbled line of his partner's jaw, Ray had turned into the tentative caress, and leaned forward to capture his lips in a long, slow kiss.

Now, the candles have burned low, and Fraser sighs softly in his sleep. Ray, head pillowed on his chest, loses himself in the gentle rise and fall of each breath, the reassuring steady rhythm of the heartbeat beneath his cheek, the warmth that wraps itself around him.

In the background, some sweet-voiced Canadian woman sings softly about heaven. Ray muses sleepily that if this isn't it, it's as damn close as he's gonna get without dying first. Eventually, the CD cycles through and spins to a halt. The room is silent but for the even, muted counterpoint of their mingled breath.

It would be perfect if it weren't for the snow. It drifts down in fat, wet flakes like feathers, blanketing the floor, the bed, the lovers. The last candle flickers, and sputters out.

It's gotten colder. Ray moves closer to the solid, reassuring weight of the Mountie next to him, and pulls up the striped wool blanket. It rasps scratchily against bare skin. He shivers. Why is he still so cold?

With a slowly-dawning horror, he realizes that the rhythmic rise and fall of the chest beneath him has ceased. The steady heartbeat has been replaced by silence. Fraser's sleeping features are schooled into a chill remoteness, the planes of his face as perfect and pale as if he were carved from ivory or ice. His lips are blue. Ray swipes away the steadily-accumulating snow, fingers burningly numb, to find the broadly muscled chest icy and still beneath his frantic hands.

"Fraser! Frase, c'mon, you got to wake up, snap out of it!" But the body beneath him is frozen and unresponsive. And cold, far too cold.

A warm hand shaking his shoulder, and he snaps awake with a jolt, sending papers cascading to the floor, and damn near falling out of his chair in the process. What the fuck was that about?

He rubs at gritty eyes and grimaces. Stiff back, stiffer neck, and a taste in his mouth like something crawled in there and died.

"Ray. Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray…" The steady repetition of his name like a litany finally penetrates, and he looks up blearily. Fraser meets his eyes with a look of honest concern. "When you said you were staying late to catch up on your paperwork, I had no idea that you meant you were going to stay the night."

"Nah, just drifted off," Ray mutters, trying to shake off the lingering disorientation of that weird-ass dream. The station is next to deserted and the hum of the overhead lights is intrusively loud.

 _Snow like feathers and cold ice beneath his questing fingertips._

"Shit, Frase, it's after one. What, you were just gonna sit there and let me sleep?"

"Language, Ray," he says repressively. "You did appear to need the rest, and you were sleeping quite peacefully until--" He frowns.

"Yeah, yeah, must've been dreaming," Ray mumbles self-consicously, still trying to rub the crick out of his neck. "You ready to go? C'mon, Dief." The wolf stretches, yawns, and hops down off the chair where he'd been curled. _Frannie's gonna have a fit about the wolf hair in the morning_ , Ray notes absently. That's it. Focus on the details, the little things.

He can't decide what unsettles him more, the memory of that heated kiss, or the icy stillness that followed.

"Are you sure you'll be all right to drive?"

Definitely the ice.

"I said I'd drop you off, and I meant it," Ray retorts gulping down the dregs of a cup of coffee. Ugh. Stone-cold and sickly sweet.

"Really Ray, I'm more concerned with the safety of--" Fraser begins.

"I'm fine, I'm fine." Ray grabs coat and keys. "Let's go already."

Fraser opens his mouth, and then stops. "If you say so, Ray," he sighs. He looks tired. Of course he does, ya dope, Ray berates himself. He wasn't the one playing sleeping beauty. He flushes, looks away, and heads for the door, trusting the Mountie to follow.

Fraser is silent all the way back to the Consulate, and Ray isn't going to be the one to open his mouth and say something stupid this time.

He can still feel the imagined warmth on his lips; his fingertips are blistered with the pain of phantom frostbite.

"Well. Good night Ray, and thank you for the ride."

 _The slow, steady spread of light as each candle was lit. Wavering dance of shadows across taut planes and angles of bare back and shoulders._

"Yeah, no prob, Frase."

 _Solid strength and heat beneath him, around him, the slickness of parted lips and tongue against his own._

"Are you…" The Mountie stops, ducks his head back into the car, hat in hand. "Are you all right?" The first few feathery flakes of snow begin to drift down. They catch in Fraser's hair and bead into droplets dewing his eyelashes.

 _The guttering death of that last candle flame._

"Yeah, I'll be fine," he says, passing a hand over his face wearily. "Just need s'more sleep, y'know?"

 _That awful moment of panic when he heard nothing but silence beneath him._

Fraser frowns, but doesn't press the point. "If you say so, Ray," he says doubtfully. The snow drifts across the windshield in a powdery dusting.

 _Chill flesh like icy marble beneath his frantic hands._

"Don' worry about it. 'night, Frase."

"Good night, Ray. Come along, Diefenbaker."

Ray starts the car again, and waits. Watches that broad red-clad back vanish into the Consulate, wolf at his heels. And shudders, an icy shiver of superstitious fear.

All of a sudden, why is he so cold?


End file.
